Pitzer College Professor Roberta Espinoza Awarded a John Randolph Haynes Foundation Faculty Fellowship

Assistant Professor of Sociology Roberta Espinoza
Assistant Professor of Sociology Roberta Espinoza

Claremont, Calif. (March 25, 2013) – Pitzer College Assistant Professor of Sociology Roberta Espinoza has been awarded a John Randolph Haynes Foundation Faculty Fellowship for her research “The Emerging Role of Nonprofit Organizations in Creating a Path to College for Low-income and Minority Students.”

In the past two decades, privately funded academic outreach programs have been making great strides helping low-income and minority students get into college. These programs provide students with the necessary information and guidance to successfully navigate the college application process. Recent research has found that these programs not only improve college access for disadvantaged students, but increase the number of students who get accepted to highly selective four-year institutions. The programs have also helped yield higher graduation rates among their participants.

Espinoza’s research will study a representative sample of the nonprofit organizations that belong to the Southern California College Access Network (SoCal CAN), a newly formed collaborative. She will analyze the strategies and practices used by these programs to achieve high college-going rates for minority and low-income first-generation college students.

“One of the biggest challenges we face as a nation is to increase college-going rates for low-income and minority youth,” Espinoza said. “I hope findings from this research can inform efforts by philanthropic and non-profit organizations to increase college access and graduation for first-generation minority students.”

Haynes Foundation Faculty Fellowships are awarded on an annual basis to social science faculty members teaching in the Southern California region. The competitive fellowships are given for proposals that are well-conceived, imaginative and break new ground on economic, social and political problems. The Foundation is interested in social science research that has the potential to influence policy and action in the Los Angeles region. The grants support faculty research.

 

Leave a Reply

About Pitzer College

Pitzer College is a nationally top-ranked undergraduate liberal arts and sciences institution. A member of The Claremont Colleges, Pitzer offers a distinctive approach to a liberal arts education by linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, social responsibility, and community involvement. For more information, please visit www.pitzer.edu.

Media Contact

Office of Communications
[email protected]